They had breakfasted together before daylight, and he had gone to
load the lumber he was taking home for his father, so that they might
have a very early start. In the noisy, untidy hotel office she sat
watching in surprise the confusion and the stir. There were crowds
of women waiting near her, women like herself waiting for wagons
to take them on towards the west, women with bundles and babies,
and quarreling, crying young children. Chirstie’s face showed how
exciting the scene was to her. She looked from group to group. She
considered a foreign woman with a handkerchief tied on her head,
whose tiny baby coughed and wheezed distressingly. She longed to
say something sympathetic to the stolid mother. But she was too
shy. Between caring for her own vigorous son, and watching other
women’s children, the hour hurried by. Presently she saw her husband
drive up, and get out to tie his horses. But before he had started
for the hotel door, a stranger accosted him, and with the stranger
Wully turned and went down the street. So she waited on. Two sets of
youngsters quarreling drew their mothers into the fray, and Chirstie
shrank away from their roughness, thoroughly shocked.
Then, before she had expected him, Wully was standing over her,
reaching down for the baby. She scarcely knew him. His face was
white. His eyes were shining strangely.
“What ails you?” she cried. “You’re sick, Wully! What’s the matter?”
“I’m all right!” he said sharply. His voice quivered with feeling. He
couldn’t trust himself to speak. His mouth was set in a hard line.
She rose and followed him, frightened. She got into the wagon, and
he handed her the baby. He climbed up beside her, and they were off.
She saw he couldn’t tell her what had happened just there. She could
wait--a little.
They were almost out of town now.
“Wully, what’s the matter? Are you sick?”
“I’m all right!”
She was more anxious than ever. She waited till the baby was asleep
in her arms, and then she laid him carefully down in the little
box in which Isobel McLaughlin had taken her babies back and forth
to town. Then she turned towards her husband with determination.
And hesitated. He looked too stern--too fierce. She sat undecided,
wretched, glancing quickly at him and then away. After a few
perplexed moments, her face darkened with terror.
“Oh, I know! You’re--you’ve seen _him_! You were like that on the
Fourth!”
He turned toward her, trying to speak.
“Yes!” he broke forth. “I saw him _dying_.”
“Oh, dying!” She tried to realize it. “Oh, if he’s _dying_, then
we’ll be happy again!”
He said nothing. His lips worked.
“I won’t have to be afraid now!” She spoke like one overcome by a
great fortune. He had never imagined she had been as unhappy as that
cry of hers indicated by its relief.
“Dying!” she repeated, tasting the sweetness of the word. Then,
suddenly:
“How do you know? Where did you see him?”
She saw his face harden with hatred.
“Wully, are you sure he’s dying? He isn’t dead yet?”
“He’s dying all right!”
After a moment she exclaimed:
“But how did you find him?”
“Somebody told me just as I was ready to start home.”
“Oh, that man! I saw that man speaking to you. How did he know to
tell you?”
“They were looking for someone to take him out home.”
“Oh, they _were_!” That seemed to have changed the situation for her.
“You mean they asked you to bring him out?”
He didn’t relish her questions.
“Yes.”
“And you wouldn’t do it, would you!” She approved. She clasped his
arm with both hands. She rejoiced in her assurance.
His anger flamed again.
“Likely I’d bring him out with you!”
“Oh, we’ll be _happy_ now, Wully!”
But after a minute she stirred uncomfortably. He felt her face grow
grave.
“Where was it you saw him, Wully?”
“In a livery stable.”
“In a livery stable!” she repeated. “Dying in such a place!” Dying
seemed not so sweet a word now.
“But why didn’t he send word home before? Think of Aunt Libby, Wully!”
“He came in on the train last night.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, enlightened. “He wanted to get home alive!”
“What’s the matter of him?” she asked again.
“Hemorrhage,” said Wully, as shortly as it was possible to speak. He
wouldn’t tell her how he had seen that snake lying bloody, dirty,
sunken helpless on a bed of straw. He urged his horses on.
She looked at him. He turned away from her troubled eyes.
After a while;
“Look here, Wully!” she faltered.
He gave her no encouragement.
“After all, he was Aunt Libby’s baby!” she sighed.
“After _all!_” he sneered. He meant to silence her. She spoke again.
“Aunt Libby was always kind to me, Wully!”
He wouldn’t answer her. He knew what was coming.
She said timidly;
“I doubt we ought to go back and get him. If he’s dying, Wully! And
Auntie waiting there for him!”
He said never a word.
“He may be dead before she sees him, if we don’t.”
“We won’t!” he almost shouted. That should have settled matters.
“But what’ll you tell her? She’ll ask. She’ll find out you wouldn’t.
You won’t can say you saw him dying, and didn’t bring him home!”
That was true. He had begun to think of that. Libby Keith would leave
no detail of that death undiscovered.
“Will you say you went away and left him there to die?”
What else could he say? He certainly wouldn’t tell that for one
long rejoicing moment he had stood looking into the eyes that so
terribly besought him--those eyes that were dying prayers, ultimate
beseechings--and had turned victoriously away. He wouldn’t say that
he had told the men who were seeking a ride home for that snake, that
he had too heavy a load for so essential a favor. He wouldn’t tell
how shortly he had answered them, and how hatefully turned on his
heel and departed.
“Wully!” she said, after a little, with conviction, “we ought to go
back and get him! We can’t treat Auntie this way!”
“Can’t we!” he exclaimed bitterly. “Giddup!” he cried to his horses.
He felt her wretchedness. He hardened his heart against her
sentimentality. Presently she said imploringly;
“We can’t do this, Wully. We must go back!”
“I will not!” He spoke passionately.
When she spoke again, it was to warn him.
“If you don’t go back, I will!”
“No you won’t!” he cried.
She was silent for several minutes then. He felt her bending down to
see if the baby was covered. Then she sat still. She was hesitating.
Then after a minute, before he could realize what was going on,
she had climbed over the side of the wagon, her foot was on the
hub, then, skirts and cloak and all, she had alighted, backwards,
stumblingly, from the wagon. By the time he had pulled up the horses,
she was the length of the wagon from him. Ignoring him, defying him,
she was calling to him over her shoulder;
“He made me do evil once. You made me do evil once. But nobody can
make me do it again!” Down the road she ran. “I’m going back to him!”
she cried.
He had never been really angry with her before. Sometimes at first,
before the baby had been born, he had grown very weary of her
importunity, her determination to make him tell his mother the truth.
But of late she had not done that. She had been so satisfactory--so
lovely. Now his rage burst forth against her.
“Go back to him, then, if you like him so well!” He hurled the words
after her, and drove on.
Even before he heard her cry of protest, he regretted his bitter
taunt. Furious with himself, with her, he hurried west. Already
he had begun to see the mistake of his sweet refusal. It would
inevitably become known that he had seen Peter’s straits, and had
refused him so slight a kindness. The whole neighborhood would be
asking the reason. He vowed to himself that he would not take that
carcass into the wagon with his wife if all the world had to know the
reason of his hatred. Such things were expected of no man. He was
only human. He couldn’t do a thing like that! And his wife had defied
him! She had left him! Ah, and he had taunted her so unjustly, so
brutally! But he had never imagined himself saying so cruel a thing
to her. He had never imagined her defying him in such a fashion.
That was what she thought of him, then. He made her do wrong once!
Classing him with that damned-- That was all the gratitude she felt
for his saving of her! But then, of course, it was an awful thing
he had just done. He thought of himself lying sick on the sidewalk,
waiting for a chance to get home. He hardened his heart. But he had
been a decent man. No violator of women! He would never do it.
He turned and looked after his deserting wife. He could see her
hurrying away from him. He had an idea of shouting to her to come
back--of commanding her to come back. But he knew she wouldn’t heed
him. He ought never to have said so hateful a thing to her. As if she
could want to go back to that-- He remembered how she had sat sobbing
on the doorstep when he first went to her. He was glad to think of
Peter Keith dying there, lonely, shrunken, filthy. He looked again
after his wife. She went steadily eastward, running towards the town.
But he had the baby. She would be coming back after a while!
He drove on, raging against her, trying to justify himself. He went
so far that he could scarcely see her now. He might have gone on
home, if there had not appeared on the horizon a team, coming towards
him. Its approach was intolerable. Somebody who might know them was
coming nearer. Somebody would see Wully McLaughlin riding westward,
and presently overtake his wife running east! He turned around
abruptly.
Facing east, he could just see her. He would quickly overtake her,
and order her to get in and come home with him at once. He would
never let her go to that livery stable full of drunks alone. He was
getting near her.
Then a strange thing happened. He saw her stop and suddenly turn
around, and come half running towards him as fast as she had run
away. He kept his face hard, unrelenting. He saw when she came near
that she was crying softly. She climbed quickly up when he stopped.
“I doubt he’s not dying,” she wept. “I can’t do it! He’s too strong,
Wully! He’s tricky!”
She cuddled against him.
“Don’t cry!” he had to say.
“I won’t look at him!” she sobbed. “You know I don’t want to go back
to him! You oughtn’t to have said that! You know I don’t like him! If
you want to know how much I hate him, I’ll tell you! It was me that
shot him that time. It wasn’t his foot I was aiming at, either!” She
wept unrestrainedly.
“You shot him!” Wully gasped.
“He would come back! What could I do! There was no place to hide. I
_shot_ at him!”
She had shot him! She had been as desperate as that. He was horrified
anew. She bent down to feel the baby’s hands, to cover him more
securely. She wanted to say something else, but she couldn’t speak
plainly because of her sobs. Yet she managed to urge the horses
eastward.
“I’ll never look at him!” she cried passionately. “You needn’t think
I like him! You oughtn’t to have said that!”
“I know it, Chirstie! I oughtn’t to have said such a thing. But you
oughtn’t to have jumped out and run away that way.”
“Yes, I ought!” she retorted, swallowing, choking. “I couldn’t help
it. It wasn’t my place to do it. But my husband wouldn’t do his part!
Wully, if you hurry now, _hurry_ enough, they’ll just think you’ve
been unloading. You won’t need to explain! I won’t have you doing
such a mean thing. I’ve got enough bad things to tell without that!
Hurry!”